"And of me?"
"I don't know. I think not, but I oughtn't to have married you."
"Mariana!"
"It would have been much better. You said so yourself once. But love is so strange. It makes people do such absurd things."
Algarcife did not reply. There was resentment in the look he bent upon her. He had not learned that even a woman in love is not a woman always in love—that love, in common with all other conditions, is subject to the forces which attract and repel, and that its equilibrium is maintained by a logical adjustment of opposites. To him Mariana's alienation betokened a fundamental failing in her nature, and with the thought he experienced a dull anger.
"I have felt so much in my life," continued Mariana, "that my capacity for sensations is lying fallow. The lack of ice in my tea and the heat in my room are of more importance than the excesses of affection. Were you ever that way?"
For a moment Algarcife did not reply; then he said, "You are very uncomfortable?"
"Yes."
"When we leave The Gotham it will be still worse. That room on Fourth Street is hellish."
"No doubt."